I have been thinking and praying a lot about following Jesus in the current climate. How can I represent the grace and love of Jesus in a culture that is angry and divided? I read pundits and commentators saying terrible things about the motives of Evangelicals as if all people of faith act in lockstep. They do not. To be fair, some of their accusations are valid. I wrote a book called “When Bad Christians Happen to Good People Happen to Good People” so I would suggest I have no problem owning the shortcomings of Christians. The fact is EVERY ONE of us falls short of the glory of God. Too often the church has made what we stand against the message of our faith instead of the wonderful and liberating Good News of the Gospel. The word Evangelical literally means “Good News”. Is that the connotation the word has in our culture today? Do we share in the degeneration of the
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Even before I decided to become a Christian I was fascinated by the impact of Jesus of Nazareth. From the time Jesus began His three-year ministry He never had an office. Jesus came from modest means. He lived on the wrong side of the culturally acceptable tracks in the town of Nazareth. Jesus did not recruit a single person of “influence” to further His campaign. Jesus did not lobby any political leaders. He did not try to recruit religious leaders to support His mission. Jesus simply walked, talked, taught, loved, and invested in the lives of twelve very ordinary men. From that resume came a faith that numbers over 2 billion people today. The group that was dubbed “Christians” has continued to expand in spite of the indefensible things that have been done under the guise of His name. I have often said that one of the greatest apologetics for the Christian faith is that it continues to flourish in
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One of my contributions with these modest little musings is to continually ask the tough questions. While listening to “Away in a Manger” my inquiring mind kicked in. You likely know verse three of the song. The cattle are lowingThe poor Baby wakesBut little Lord JesusNo crying He makes As I listened an important series of difficult and probing inquiries popped into my head. I can’t answer the last question but I can help with the others. Lowing is defined at dictionary.com as “the characteristic sound uttered by cattle; a moo”. So little baby Jesus was awakened by the characteristic sound uttered by a cow. That would not have flowed well in the lyric so I understand using lowing. The next part of the song is disturbing to those of us who are or have been parents. If any of the babies who grew up in our household were awakened by cattle lowing they would be squalling (defined as “the characteristic sound uttered by a ticked off baby; a scream”).
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Thomas Jefferson is an enigma for many. Political enemies in his day accused him of being an atheist yet he started the statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom with the phrase, “Almighty God hath created the mind free.” He certainly would not have been invited to speak at an evangelical conference to share his view that most clergymen are “soothsayers and necromancers.” You likely have a bigger brain than I do but I will confess that I had to look up necromancers. It literally means one who interrogates the dead. Okay. Not sure what church Jefferson was frequenting. Jefferson believed that Bible needed to be fixed. He took out his scissors and cut out the parts of the Bible that he didn’t believe. He excised the virgin birth, all of the miracles and the Resurrection. He cobbled together a book he titled “The Philosophy of Jesus of Nazareth”. His clippers removed every miracle while leaving teachings about helping the needy
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